Tag Archives: Australia

Macklin to calm indigenous fears over mining tax

Patricia Karvelas; 11/5/10 Jenny Macklin will meet indigenous leaders to reassure them that the new mining tax will not hurt their communities in deals they strike with mining bosses. Indigenous leaders have attacked the new mining super-profits tax, saying it will hurt people in remote regions and that mining companies will be less willing to […]read more…

Sri Lankans ‘panicked’ in rescue bid

Paul Maley; 11/5/10; (2 Items) Five Australia-bound asylum-seekers who perished at sea set themselves adrift in a fatal attempt to find a passing ship after their wooden fishing boat ran out of fuel, food and drinking water. As the remaining 59 Sri Lankans from the boat arrived yesterday at Christmas Island after being rescued and […]read more…

Miners strangely silent on the billions they reap in tax credits

Charles Berger; 11/5/10 Resource giants shriek about what they pay. Here’s what they get. The mining industry, in its furious offensive against the proposed resource rent tax, is playing the old magician’s trick of getting you to stare at their right hand, while ignoring what the left is doing. The tax they pay is their […]read more…

Images of the ancients

Victoria Laurie; 11/5/10 Shimmering heat and a dazzling purple-blue sky hang over Burrup Peninsula’s vast rocky landscape, and intense light makes it hard to pick out details in the stony rubble. But once they adjust, the eyes can make out lively images of humans, animals and symbols. In this remote northwest corner, about 1500km north […]read more…

Jesus, it’s changeable

11/5/10 Penny Wong describes Tony Abbott as “irresponsible and disappointing” for encouraging scepticism in the classroom (“Abbott evokes Jesus to teach pupils all about ‘natural’ climate change”, 10/5). I fail to see anything irresponsible in his statements as reported. This is the truth as we know it.In 2007 the UN’s climate change panel advised governments […]read more…

Sydney couple held five women in slavery conditions

10/5/10; (2 Items) A couple who operated a Sydney brothel forced five women to live in “conditions of slavery”, making them work more than 100 hours per week, even if they were sick, a jury has been told. Trevor Frank McIvor, 62, and his de facto wife, Kanokporn Tanuchit, 44, have each pleaded not guilty […]read more…

TV show teaches Aboriginal language to kids

10/5/10 A television channel is broadcasting the first lessons in an Aboriginal language aimed at young children, in a bid to stem an alarming decline that wiped out hundreds of native dialects. “Waabiny Time,” for three to six-year-olds, teaches “yes,” “no” and other basic terms in the Noongar language, which is spoken in the southwestern […]read more…

Payment fight leaves indigenous workers homeless

Anthony Klan; 10/5/10 For indigenous Australian Anthony Trimbole, a secure job installing scaffolding at NSW public housing sites meant a steady income and comfortable rental home. But now a stoush between major government contractor Spotless and one of its subcontractors has left the company he works for – Koorie Scaffolding & Rigging – teetering on […]read more…

Timor oil permit given despite Thai company’s role in disaster

Paul Cleary; 10/5/10; (2 Items) The Rudd government approved the acquisition of an offshore oil permit by the Thai company responsible for the Montara disaster just three months after its 10-week oil leak in the Timor Sea. The government approved PTTEP’s acquisition of the Oliver field in the Timor Sea before the inquiry by Commissioner […]read more…

Going berko about the burqa

Dick Gross;10/5/10, (3 Items) There is a financial contagion threatening to sweep Europe but another contagion, just as destructive, is going pan European – Islamophobia. The French started it with the prohibition of the veil in schools. It has now extended to prohibitions on Islamic practices in Switzerland and Belgium. Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi in […]read more…

Abbott’s contracting role revealed in black and white

Leslie Cannold; 9/5/10 Tony Abott is said to be likeable. I believe it, though I’ve only met him once. Introduced by a Crikey! journalist at Parliament House in Canberra — where I had gone to advocate against Abbott’s continued ministerial control over the fertility control drug RU486 — the then health minister refused to shake […]read more…

Five feared dead as disabled vessel towed to safety

9/5/10 Reports that five suspected asylum seekers have drowned trying to reach Australia are “tragic”, the federal government says. Fifty-nine people were rescued yesterday near the Cocos Islands after their boat became disabled. Today they were taken ashore the Australian territory. But Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor says the rescued passengers have reported five people […]read more…

It’s power and the passion

Yuko Narushima; 9/5/10 When Kerry Arabena was told the Royal Flying Doctor Service could not attend to a young boy whose finger had been severed, she was furious. ”That boy was going to be a concert pianist,” she said before slamming down the phone. Reflecting on what sparked her passion for indigenous justice this week, […]read more…

The road to hell

Susan Mushart; 8/5/10 Whenever my mother did something particularly reprehensible – donating our Halloween candy to Biafra, forcing us to wear her abortive craft projects (this was before the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child added that clause on hand-crotcheting) – she’d always offer the same excuse. “OK, so it didn’t work out,” […]read more…

Still sensitive after 35 years

Hamish Macdonald; 8/5/10; Worth reading; Jill Jollife; Scribe Pulications,2009 After the debacle of “sexed- up” intelligence and misleading statements to legislatures by George Bush’s administration and allied governments as they decided to invade Iraq, the use of “national security” to block public scrutiny of such decisions is not accepted as readily as it was. How […]read more…

What women wear is their business

Samah Hadid & Rayann Bekdache; 8/5/10 A woman gets arrested for wearing a controversial item of clothing that the state deems out of line and is convicted of public indecency. We are not talking about Belgium, Italy or France but, rather, Sudan. However, these days it’s easy to get the countries mixed up. It’s hard […]read more…